Winter on Regionalism and Nationalism in Frontier Mission

In the booklet The Challenge of Unreached Peoples, Ralph D. Winter outlines some of the potential dangers and opportunities faced when we consider how to reach the Unreached Peoples of the world.

In this post, out of a series, we look at a key challenge and opportunity, what Winter calls "Regionalism" and "Nationalism."

Regionalism and Nationalism

Another danger is the concept that people in each region and nation will reach the unreached peoples of their own region and nation- that all the various regions of the world need to do is keep in touch and pray for each other as each region tackles the task in its own region.

This common assumption is utterly absurd.

First of all it would be an enormously unstrategic distribution of effort, because where Christians are most numerous the unreached peoples are least numerous! Look again at the 10/40 Window! Can we expect each region in that Window to do its own job without outside help?

Furthermore, even if the Northeast Region of Asia were not needed in the rest of the world, the Northeast region itself needs the help of the other regions.

No Region Can Do Its Own Job Without the Help of Outside Regions.

Why is this?

All regions are merely part of an interdependent whole.

For example, the believers in the United States have forgotten the importance of the intergenerational family. They need the help of Chinese believers in Singapore to remind them of what a family really is. Americans aren't going to understand this aspect of the Bible without the help of believers from afar. This is one value of the global Church!

Furthermore, Americans can't understand the flood of the world's people in the USA without the help of missionaries from other countries. Many Americans have the naive idea that each local congregation in America can simply reach out to neighbors who nowadays come from thousands of overseas peoples.

This is not working. This will never work.

Neither can Northeast Asian nations deal properly with their millions of immigrant laborers. Northeast Asian congregations need to be as wise as the church in Jerusalem.

Missions requires either finding or creating bi-culturals.